Jay Taft: Bears get win, but can only hide Webb for so long

Monday

CHICAGO — The Chicago Bears pulled away for a 23-6 win over the St. Louis Rams in their final home game in nearly a month Sunday.

CHICAGO — The Chicago Bears pulled away for a 23-6 win over the St. Louis Rams in their final home game in nearly a month Sunday.

It was enough to bump them to 2-1, and the defense had another confidence-boosting game that could go a long way to revamping that old win-with-defense mentality.

But this team is supposed to be driven (more) by the offense this year, and the Bears were supposed to beat the Rams; and they were supposed to beat them up. The offense did very little to erase the bad memories that linger from a demoralizing defeat to the Packers in the early-Week 2 showdown. So what did they learn from Sunday’s game that will help them avoid a letdown like the one in Green Bay as the season unfolds?

One thing they should have gathered from the offensive side of the ball is that it just may get harder and harder to hide the biggest deficiency on the team right now: Left tackle J’Marcus Webb. They sure made a valiant effort of it against St. Louis, though it was not a good measuring stick. Those will be coming soon enough.

Webb has been under the Bears’ microscope for months now, battling his way through the summer offseason programs and training camp in the team’s most heated position battle of the year.

Somehow, he came out of it all as the team’s starting left tackle. So for the past three games, the team’s first three of the season, I put Webb under my microscope to see if he deserved to be there. After what I locked in on in my binoculars during Sunday’s 23-6 win over St. Louis, the answer is clear: No, he doesn’t.

Like they did in a Week 1 win over Indy, and in the Week 2 debacle out in Green Bay, all day Sunday the Bears did their best to hide him, work around him and mask the king of the flaws for this team.

If the Bears’ coaching staff saw the same thing I did, they had best start warming up Plan B. But I guess, therein lies the problem: There really is no Plan B. Good left tackles do not grow on trees, nor do they often wander around the streets waiting for an in-season callup to the NFL. And clearly Chris Williams — who played tight end next to Webb on three short-yardage plays Sunday — is not their choice for “the answer.”

On Sunday, the Bears did a good job of hiding Webb early on, running every play but two away from his left-tackle spot during the opening 11-play drive. However, they quickly had to waste a timeout so he could tie his shoe, and he returned to form when he let defenders introduce themselves to Cutler on two pressures later in the first quarter, one of which was the only problem during a third-down incompletion.

Webb was Webb on seven pass plays Sunday, getting burned or simply backward-dancing with his defender. And the Bears constantly kept extra blockers in, and around Webb, but it didn’t always matter. Quarterback Jay Cutler was sacked twice, scrambled away from pressure three times, and was busy audibling out of plays that were probably going Webb’s way throughout.

When I asked Cutler if he was comfortable with the kind of “max-protect” schemes they used Sunday after the game, he walked around it, talking about how Webb and the line, near the end of the game, “were just playing one-on-one well,” and something about how they got the job done.

On the one play in the first half when it appeared as if Cutler had plenty of time to pass, Webb got help on his end from running back Kahlil Bell. We all know they can’t keep halfbacks, tight ends, fullbacks, and even extra backup linemen, in to babysit Webb every weekend, against every NFL opponent on the schedule.

During a key third-quarter, third-and-eight, Webb was isolated on the Rams’ rush-end Chris Long, and it appeared as if Cutler knew it. Although Webb was able to get the jump-step on Long and keep him wide, Cutler quickly got happy feet and sailed one over the head of Brandon Marshall.

It’s an issue that is going to have to be dealt with. How? I don’t think anybody knows.

“I was happy with the game,” Bears head coach Lovie Smith said. “It’s pretty simple guys: When things don’t go well, we’re going to be really unhappy. But when you find the way as a football team to win the game, we are going to enjoy that first, and then go back to the field and correct those things.”

There is one big thing — Webb — that needs correcting right about now.

Jay Taft: 815-987-1384; jtaft@rrstar.com; @jaytaft

REPORT CARD
Passing offense: B-
Jay Cutler (17-for-31 for 183 yards with no TDs and one interception) overthrew open receivers on at least three occasions, and finished with a passer rating of 58.9. But, as he said after the game: “I expect the offense to do what is required of them on that day. Some days we may have to score 41 points to win. Other days it may be about ball security and making plays when we have to. For our team to put up over 20 points, the offense has to be in position to do some good things, and they were.”

Rushing offense: B+
Michael Bush in place of Matt Forte? No problem as Bush ran hard, gaining 55 yards on 18 carries with another short rushing TD, his third of the season. Kahlil Bell gained only 20 yards on 10 carries, but he had an 18-yard gain and spelled Bush well. Cutler even had a 21-yard scramble to set up a Robbie Gould field goal late.

Passing defense: A
Six more sacks and two more interceptions for a Bears defense that has turned the tables on its up-and-down pass defense of last season has this unit rolling. Sam Bradford (18-35 for 152 yards with no TDs) came in as one of the hottest QBs in the league, but he left downtrodden. “We definitely didn’t play well today. Give them credit, they played us tough,” Bradford said. “But I think there are a lot of things that when we look at the film, it is going to fall on us and things that we were in control of and just didn’t handle. It’s a tough game.”

Rushing defense: A
The Rams never really got the run game going, gaining just 59 yards on 17 carries, with the team’s star Steven Jackson (11-29) being held at bay the whole way. The Bears have held two of their first three opponents to under 63 yards rushing.

Special teams: B
This was a push as both teams were solid on special teams, but the Bears have Devin Hester, who put enough of a scare into Jeff Fisher to make him kick away from him in the second half.

Coaching: B+
The Bears’ game plan was to run it right down the throat of the Rams, and keep pounding it at them. They got away from it at times, dropping Cutler back to pass even on five straight plays in the fourth quarter. But they protected the offensive line, and Cutler, and got the job done.

Overall: B-
The Bears got a win, which is the only thing they said they cared about. However, it was not much of a confidence booster for the offense that started the season off strong before dipping below sea level in Week 2. With the defense playing like this, it may not matter as much as we thought.

--Compiled by Jay Taft

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